Turning 20, Growing Strong

Rough Notes recently featured SIAA for their 20th anniversary, highlighting the accomplishments of the past 20 years while looking ahead to the future. Below are a few excerpts from the article:

In 1995, at the encouragement of a group of insurance executives and consultants, a new business model was created based on the success of the SAN Group. Today SIAA has more than 5,300 member agencies, of which 48 are master agencies. Premium volume for 2014 totaled $5.7 billion, up from $4.8 billion in 2013, and SIAA signed up 410 new member agencies last year. Since its inception, SIAA and its master agencies have created more than 3,000 new startup agencies coming predominantly from former captive agents.

The master-member agency concept

“A master agency is different from a retail agency,” said Jim Masiello, SIAA Founder, Chairman and CEO. “It becomes a profit center and has more of a wholesale/MGA-type relationship with its member agencies. The member agencies are much smaller than the master agencies and have no more than nine employees.”

Strategic Partners

“The number one consideration is that the company understands and accepts our master agency/member agency concept,” Masiello continues. “This means that the insurer will appoint a master agency at our request and that it will compensate our agencies at the highest level.”

More support for agents

“Of our agencies’ total volume, about 60% is personal lines and 40% is commercial lines,” Masiello says. “We have a lot of agents who don’t do anything in commercial lines but want to and could if they had the proper support. So we created the Business Insurance Advantage division, which provides tools, mentoring, and training to help member agencies grow profitable small commercial lines business.

Putting it all together

“The best way to describe SIAA,” Masiello says, “is to say that we’re a multi-level partnership model where it’s all for one and one for all.”